Timeless Wisdom: Weekend Torah Teaching - Genesis 1:1-1:31

On Today's Show: Dennis Prager delves into the book of Genesis, exploring its profound impact on human history and understanding of God. He discusses the significance of the first sentence, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth," and its implications on the concept of creation and the nature of God. Prager examines the idea that God created the world from nothing, and how this concept revolutionized the way people thought about the world and their place in it. He also touches on the importance of understanding the Hebrew language and the cultural context of the ancient Israelites.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Here thousands of
hours of Dennis's lectures courses in classic radio programs. Had
to purchase Dennisprager's Rational Bibles. Go to Dennisprager dot com.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Should be arriving at your house sometime before December. It's
the January issue. I'm always about two months late. Are
you raising your hand already? You can't hear me? Well,
I don't want to boom? But is that better? Okay? Well,
I'll tell you this is retger. If this happened on radio,

(01:03):
spending the first twenty minutes asking all listeners can you
hear me? Would it be nice if you just thought
all of you had volume controls. That's what you're used
to with me is having a volume control. And this
is live which presents all the dilemmas of live thing.
I have been searching my whole life for one book
that I think would make the Holocaust understandable in its

(01:24):
immensity to anyone of any background, faith, race, religion. And
I found one just two months ago, and it's out there.
I just want you to be aware of why it's
out there. It has nothing to do with the course,
but it's it's it's life changing type of book. Just
wanted to make that where oh, Shadows of Auschwitz I

(01:49):
don't sell. Well, that's very serious flaws. But isn't it
out there. That's the reason I'm waiving it, because there's
only one book out there, all right, besides mine. This
is not my book. It is a great book, and
it is available outside if you want it. That's why
it's out there. It is absolutely unique, and books go

(02:09):
out of print very rapidly, so I strongly stry. In fact,
I beg you for the sake of just knowledge. And
you'll see when you see it why I feel this
way about it. It's mostly pictures, but it's pictures that
the Nazis themselves took. And his commentary. He's a Christian,

(02:31):
it's Christian theologian. His commentary on every picture is what
is so incredible about this book. Harry James Cargus Crossroad
is the publisher. Okay, thank you. Next, I have a question,
the philosophic question, which I'm just curious. It's a point
that I have made every so often, and I would

(02:56):
like to see if it continues to be valid. People
often ask about suffering, Why is there so much suffering
in life, unjust suffering, and one of the reasons, or
one of the ways in which I respond, is to
distinguish between natural suffering and man made or human made suffering.

(03:17):
I would like you to raise your hand when you
think of the greatest pain in your life, pains a
plural that you've experienced unjust pains, if you will, I
think that's the best way to put it. That you
felt were terrible pain and not terribly just if you

(03:39):
feel that they were induced by people, or they were
induced by natural thing like hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, disease, or
were they induced by people hurting you or hurting someone
you love. Okay, Therefore, if it has been if the
great majority has been one or the great majority has

(04:02):
been another, I'd like you to raise your hand. If
the great majority seventy five percent, three quarters of the
pain in your life has been induced by people rather
than of natural causes, please raise your hands. That's dramatic,
isn't it. I think that that helps immediately. It helps

(04:24):
a lot of people who ask about the question of
unjust suffering to recognize that it doesn't reflect on God.
It reflects on people. Just when you realize how overwhelmingly.
And it doesn't matter what group. This is a mixed
group religiously and so on. It doesn't matter where I

(04:45):
have asked this question. That is exactly the response I got.
And I was just it's something actually which we're validating
for the sake, for God's sake, who gets a bad rap?
And I just thought that he would be pleased before
Genesis that we gave him a good name. All right,
I thank you for that, and now let me begin. Now.

(05:06):
First of all, I wear a keep how whenever I
teach Torah, because to me this is not literature. To me,
this is holy and therefore you'll understand normal courses. I don't,
but for Torah I do. I do not roach this
as great literature. Shakespeare is great literature. This is the Bible.

(05:29):
That doesn't mean, though, that I leave my brain at
home and just bring my spirit or my theology to
the Bible. I read the Bible exactly as it is,
but I do regard it as more than great literature.
My task in this course with you is to show

(05:51):
you why it's more than great literature, why it tells
you about life more than any other book or series
of books ever written. I've given a course here on Deuteronomy,
and I've given one on Exodus. Two of the five
books of Moses, the first books of the Torah or Hebrew,
and of the Hebrew Bible, and of the Bible for

(06:15):
Jews and Christians. The first five books begin, of course,
with I come to teaching Genesis with fear and trepidation.
To use care of Guard's famous terms, I have always
found it a daunting task to get through Genesis one
and two, let alone the whole book. Everybody knows the

(06:39):
story of Genesis one. And it's much harder to teach
what everybody knows than it is to teach what nobody knows.
Everything's a revelation. You've all thought about creation. You've all
thought about the garden of Eden. You will know about
Adam and Eve. You all know about an apple and
a serpent. You all know about all that stuff. What
is there to say? I have read Genesis one and two,

(07:02):
the first ten chapters of Genesis, so many times since
I'm a child, and in Hebrew. I studied all of
this as a child in Jewish schools called yeshivas, and
yet so much was not clear to me. After all,
that study, and I wasn't prepared to ever go public

(07:24):
with Genesis un till some things got clear to me.
And some of the things that I'm about to tell
you became clear to me. Four o'clock today, my wife
is here. She is a living witness to how true
that is. I keep coming up with these revelations, or
what I thought were revelations, and I'd say, now, I'm

(07:45):
not going to tell you. You'll hear it in class.
I don't want to ruin it for you. But it's true.
It's just really to the last minute things were beginning
to fall into place. I didn't quite understand what is
the message in all of this. I think the message
in all of it is staggering, and I want to
I want to do today Genesis one. We may not

(08:07):
even finish Genesis one. We may get to Genesis two.
I'm not sure. So your four classes on Genesis may
bring us up to Genesis four. I'm not sure it's true.
It's truly a matter of how it goes. If you
have questions, please jot them down so that you can

(08:28):
ask them at the end of the class or next time.
But if I stop each time, anyone has a question
A very often, I'll answer it as I go on.
B I couldn't go on. I know you'll have questions.
It's not possible. It's too rich. We are about to
enter a Maler symphony, I mean, with themes going on

(08:50):
in every instrument, and you just have to listen so
carefully to what is going on. Every choice of word
in Genesis one has something to say, as I will
show you in most cases a few more preparatory words.
Do I read this as a religious person? Do I

(09:11):
read this as a person? Do I read this as
a Jew? Do I read this as a Western person?
The answer is I read as all of those combined.
I can't separate myself in that manner, but I do
first enter with intellectual honesty. I am not here with
an agenda. My agenda is not to prove to you

(09:33):
God wrote it, because that is not my concern anyway.
Even theologically, I am convinced that if there were no God,
it would not have been written. Did God dictate every
single word? I don't know, And frankly, it doesn't really
matter to me. What matters to me is what is
it that I could learn from it? Most Jews don't

(09:54):
know this let alone non Jews. Torah, which is the
five Books of Moses, doesn't mean law, it means teacher.
The purpose of biblical text is to learn, is to
be taught something by it and learn. I think the
way you will understand life will be affected by how

(10:14):
you understand Genesis one. Virtually every theme in life in
the first two chapters of Genesis is covered, male female relations,
the way we should look at our parents, the purpose
of life, is there a God, how should we treat nature?
It's all there in the first two chapters. It's overwhelming.

(10:36):
So those are my preamble words. Now, I photo copied
Genesis one here for you. I hope that there's enough
for at least you look over somebody's shoulder. And obviously
next time you'll probably want to bring your own Bible.
I couldn't care less what translation you have, or of
course the original if you know Hebrew. So I just

(10:58):
whatever was in the office was translated. This is not
my favorite translation. The truth is, I'm not thrilled with
any translation, but it's par for the chorus. Translations from
this are very difficult, Okay. In the beginning, God created

(11:19):
the heaven and the earth.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless.

Speaker 2 (11:32):
Wisdom, or the heavens in the earth, which is more
accurate because heavens are the plural and Hebrew, and I'm
gonna talk about that word at some point, shall I
in Let me begin with answering the question of science
versus religion. I think that this is a stumbling block

(11:55):
to a lot of people understanding Genesis. I begin, I
begin with the premise that there cannot be can not
be a controversy, an argument between science and religion. If

(12:16):
something is true, then religion cannot deny it, or it
is a false religion. Therefore, the whole notion that there
is a problem between Genesis and science strikes me as foolish.
If a scientist says it, I think he's a foolish scientist.
If a religious person says it, I think he's a

(12:37):
foolish religious person. The purpose of Genesis, as I will
show you, is not to teach the nature of science.
It is to teach the nature of God. That is
my first and foremost statement to you. You will leave
understanding God better. The purpose of Genesis one is not

(12:59):
to tell you how the world was created. That is
the purpose of the biology and physics books that you
have at college. And they do a good job. And
as you know, they change every year because the more
we learn, the more we have to change the past
science books. So they are constantly exploring something that will

(13:20):
never be fully resolved, how did everything happen? But I
love science. Science teaches truths about how things happened. That
is not at all the purpose of Genesis. If God
wrote it, Moses wrote it, brilliant people wrote it. Whoever
wrote it, it would be the furthest thing from their mind,

(13:42):
or from his mind or her mind that we would
learn science from this. It's preposterous. That is not the task,
as I will show you. But you will learn about life.
That is what it is here to teach. Therefore, the question,
for example, did God create the world in six days?

(14:02):
Literally or not? I will show you from internal evidence
you cannot hold at least at the first days were
twenty four hour days from internal evidence, and maybe it
was understood by who wrote it as a miracle of
six days. So what so what do we therefore have

(14:24):
to live by it and call fossils the works of
the devil. All we do is make God and religion
seem silly. Then there is a very famous Jewish saying,
the signature of God is truth. If something is true,
then by definition, you must believe it. You cannot suspend

(14:44):
your intellect when approaching God. It is one of the
basic beliefs of my life, and I don't want it suspended.
When we look at Genesis, now, the first sentence itself
is overwhelming. It is overwhelming. In the beginning, God created
the heavens and the earth. And by the way, there

(15:05):
are alternate and legitimately alternate translations. When God began to
create the heavens and the earth is another alternate and
legitimate reading, just for those of you who are interested
in that. It doesn't make any difference, however, to the
points that I am about to make. Let me show

(15:26):
you how much is in this sentence. This sentence changed
human history. Okay, this sentence changed history. I will explain why.
First of all, it tells us that everything came about
by God. That in and of itself is staggering. It means,

(15:48):
among other things, that everything has a purpose and intelligence
created the world. The very moment you say that God
created the world you are making an argument for purpose.
God does not do things purposelessly. I mean, that is
just something even an atheist. I'm not asking you to

(16:09):
be a believer. I'm asking you to take from within
its own evidence. If there is a God, all right,
we'll use an if. If there is a God and
God created everything, there must be a reason for it.
You can't argue he was bored. You can even argue
he was bored by the way argue he was bored. Okay,
but at least then there's a reason God wanted to

(16:30):
be interested in us. But whatever there is, whatever your
reason you will give, there is reason. It is the
antithesis of the atheist Veltenshall, the atheist worldview, the a theist,
non theist, no God involved. What is the choice to
God creating the heavens and the earth. The heavens and
the earth came about by themselves, then there's no purpose.

(16:52):
There is no point. This changed history. There is a
divine will in creation is already one of the most
important things stated in Genesis one one. There is a
point to this universe and therefore, obviously to our lives. Okay,

(17:14):
number one. Number two, it implies that it is creation
which is Latin for from nothing, the beginning. In the beginning,
God created, God started, and he didn't create from something.
God created. How do we know that it's out of

(17:36):
nothing because of the word create. The word create, which
is in Hebrew brah, is used in the Bible only
when God does it. There is no time in the
entire Bible where you say vaevra adam and something that
man or woman has created. It is a term reserved

(17:57):
for God. Because only God can create from nothing. We
can do everything else God can do. We can order things,
we can make things, but we cannot create. Even if
we were to make life and attest to it's not
creati ox nihilo. It's not creation from nothing. So to say, well,

(18:19):
man will then be God, No, man will not be God.
God did it from nothing. We live at a time,
by the way, where scientifically this is no longer easily
scuffed at. The big Bang theory just got a very
big bang this week, a big boost apparently in one
of apparently being called one of the great finds in cosmology.

(18:43):
The study of the origins of the universe is now
apparently coming close to proof that there was a beginning.
That's amazing. I remember I've been arguing theism for years,
and I remember the most famous and eloquent, I think
argument of atheists. I would say, as a theist that

(19:03):
God always existed, and the atheist would answer, matter always existed,
and it would be a draw. The universe was always here,
God was always here. Pick your choice. We don't have
to pick that any longer. One of them wasn't here
all the time. One of them came out of nothing.

(19:24):
And it's pretty dramatic that God begins with let there
be like given the intensity of the light of the
Big Bang. Now, I am not saying that who wrote
this said let there be a big Bang and so on,
because a thousand years from now they will have other
ways of understanding the beginning. And I don't want to
be stuck with hanging religion on science. I'm merely here
to say to you that if there was a beginning,

(19:47):
that's a pretty powerful thing. Robert Jastrow is a famous astronomer,
actually geologist astronomer, and he wrote an article in the
New York Times magazine about fifteen years ago about the
Big Bang, which then became a book, a little book
called God and the Astronomers. You must pick it up, Jastro. Jastrow,

(20:10):
you can read it in an hour and a half
if you're a slow reader like me. If you're speed reader,
you could do it while drinking a pepsi. And the book,
the book is Thesis, was great. And at the end
of the book he says, well, physicists and astronomers are
now climbing the final peak of knowledge of the origins

(20:33):
of the universe. And as they finally get to the top,
they look around and they find that there's a band
of theologians who have been sitting there the whole time.
Jastro is an agnostic geologist, and that's what he wrote,

(20:55):
that the higher astronomers climb a mountain, the more they're
likely to find theology. That is what is happening, because
in the beginning God created the world, and creation means
from nothing. Therefore it is used rarely and only with
regard to God. Number three. The first sentence tells us

(21:19):
something that people today this moment need to hear terribly.

Speaker 1 (21:25):
This episode of timeless wisdom will continue right after this.
Now back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless wisdom.

Speaker 2 (21:39):
That God created nature. God is not part of nature.
There is no more important inference to be drawn from
this at this time and history. One of the reasons
I deeply believe in the Torah is because it has
something to say to every generation that is deeply needed,
and in this case, this is deeply needed. There are

(22:02):
people today who hold that God is in nature or
nature is God. I don't only mean simple worship of trees,
though sometimes it even devolves into that, just an argument
Nature is divine and God is in nature, or as
New Age would put it, God is in every one

(22:24):
of us. That is not true. God is outside of us.
That's what's here. God precedes us. It's humbling, but God
does precede us. You are not God. You are in
God's image, something we will talk about because it's in
the first chapters. But we are not God and we

(22:46):
are not God's. God is outside of us. He created
the heavens and the earth. The importance of God being
above nature I will talk about a little later. Let
me make one obvious point which has always disturbed me
about people saying that nature is God or equating nature
with God. Nature is a moral Nature has no morality.

(23:12):
Nature's only law is survival of the fittest. There is
no commandment to animals. Love your neighbor as yourself. The
command to animals is eat your neighbor before you are eaten.
And I don't blame them. I'm not anti animal for
making that point. I'm being realistic. A safari opened my

(23:32):
eyes to this. Should all take a safari. What if
any of you romanticize nature? Please go to Africa, spend
a couple of weeks as I did in Kenya Tanzania,
and watch the way animals live, not in the zoo
or at home with your cats and dogs that you love,
but how they live in real life. They spend most

(23:54):
of their day trying to avoid being eaten and trying
to find who is smaller than them that they could eat.
That's that's nature. Hitler used nature for survival of the fittest.
Hitler said that should be our law, and we arians
will show we are the fittest. The Jews are the
least fit, and we will we will eat them, we

(24:15):
will devour them. It's no coincidence the Jews were called
by Nazis vermic and equated to animals. That's what you do.
It's what one animal does to another. Eradicates it if necessary,
so This identification of God with nature is terribly a
moral God is above nature. God created nature, and you

(24:39):
will see in the entire first chapter repeated, God tells
nature what to do. Nature has no will of its own.
Next was really a separate point, but I tied it
in God commands no. Nature has no independent will of

(25:03):
its own. Fifth, I believe it is God's existence is
taken for granted. One of the extraordinary revolutions caused by
Genesis one is its complete rejection obliteration of all ancient

(25:28):
ways of looking at the gods. They had what were
called theogeny jenny as in Genesis, as in Cosmogeny is
the Latin for beginning. What's theogeny the beginning of a god?
All the ancient stories of creation had theogeny. They asked
what superficial atheists is opposed to profound atheists asked today, well,

(25:54):
where did God come from? That's exactly what the Pagans asked,
where did the gods come from? So in all parallel
creation myths, you have the creation of the gods. You
don't have the gods creating first. You have the gods
being created first. How did they come about? And look

(26:16):
at the simplicity of the first sentence of the Hebrew Bible.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
God was there. It's just a given. There is no
beginning to God. Let me read to you from one
of the scholars who's written on ancient cosmogonies. His name

(26:39):
is Bernhardt Jakobsen. Excuse me, Bernhard Andersen. Yakobsen was another
one who wrote on him, Bernard Andersen. Although the Bible
takes for granted the contours of ancient cosmology, in other words,
it understood how other people wrote their cosmogonies beginnings of
the world, and it utilized some of the language, it

(27:01):
has de mythologized the ancient understanding of existence. The Hebrew
Bible contains no theogeny, no myth which traces the creation
to a primordial battle between divine powers, no ritual which
enabled men to repeat the mythological drama and thereby ensure

(27:21):
the supremacy of the national God. Mythological allusions have been
torn out of their ancient context of polytheism and nature
religion and have acquired a completely new meaning within the
historical syntax of Israel's faith. My friends, I have a

(27:43):
lot of faith in my ability to explain things, But
I truly believe that I failed to communicate to you
how Genesis one changed history. How this notion of a
god who created the world above nature, invisible, non pagan,
monotheistic changed all of history. Genesis one to one changed

(28:06):
things more than anything you can imagine, anything, more than
the French Revolution, more than the American Revolution. It made
subsequent thinking about life possible. I will show you why later,
but please understand the revolution. Remember this sentence. No matter
how you look at biblical origins, this sentence is probably

(28:27):
three thousand years old. That's incredible. That's incredible. You know
people were doing three thousand years ago. I mean, do
you know how primitive the conception of the world was.
And then somebody came along and said, in the beginning,
an invisible, unknowable, untouchable god who had no birth created

(28:48):
the world, Give me a break. Would have been the
reaction of any pagan. It is too wild. It is
so unbelievably abstract. And how did he do it? The
pagan will come over to this Jew and say, oh,
really not, how did this god do it? He just said,
let it happen. Oh, come on, He didn't make it

(29:10):
out of clay. He didn't make it from a turtle.
What are you talking about? He just said, let there
be life too. It's too abstract, but that's exactly its greatness.
Number six or seven, whatever number I'm up to. Bere

(29:30):
sheet in the beginning means God created something else, which
is incredible for three thousand years ago, it's incredible for
anything prior to Albert Einstein, God created time. There was
no time, because prior to the beginning is nothing, including

(29:51):
no time. How do you think that sat with the
ancient pagans. It doesn't sit well with you. You understand
no time. What happened ten minutes before the beginning, wasn't
it ten minutes to the beginning? Right? That's how the
mind would think, But that's not how it works. There

(30:12):
was no time. Einstein has shown this God created time
in the beginning. He's outside of time. God is not
only outside of nature. God is outside of time. This
is an incredible God. That's part of the reason. By
the way that you could begin to grasp how God

(30:32):
could look at the world. God is outside of this
confine and that is what makes one, i think, even rationally,
hold it there must be something beyond this life. This
is one variant of the possibilities, and God has other
things in mind which we cannot grasp. Next, God is monotheistic,

(30:59):
it says Breshit bar Alohim in the beginning, Elohim created.
Elohim is plural. It is plural. However, just like the
word in Hebrew, water is plural. There is no singular
for water in Hebrew. It's mayan. There's no word. It's

(31:22):
just the way it is. An analogy to English is fish,
the fish swim or the fish swims. You can have
it either way we sow to in Hebrew. This is
not meant to disagree with my friends here who have
a Christological reading of this. It's merely to say that
the evidence doesn't support a plural reading of the word

(31:47):
Elohim for a very simple reason, with one exception that
I'll come to. It always uses the singular verb Lohim creates.
If it were plural, it would be Yelohim create, And
here Barrah is the singular. Ylohim is also one of

(32:07):
the two major words in Genesis and the Torah, generally
for God. The other one is a do Nai or Jehovah.
In the literal origin. The second name Jehovah comes in
in chapter two, which leads a lot of Biblical critics

(32:28):
to hold that those are two different documents, the Yelohim
document or eedocument, and the Jehovah document the Jay document.
I have no desire to get into the documentary hypothesis.
It doesn't interest me particularly. The reason it doesn't interest
me particularly is because I read the Bible to learn
from it, not to figure out who wrote what. So

(32:49):
I appreciate that there were those who will find that fascinating.
I don't. But what is clear is Ylohim is the
God of the world, and Jehovah is the personal God.
The God of nature or the world is in chapter one.
God gets personal in chapter two, and so you then

(33:11):
have God Jehovah speaking the personal God. Those are two
separate understandings God. God is one, but God has many facets.
One of them is the universal facet, the natural facet
of creating the world. The other one is the personal

(33:33):
Next revolution and verse one. This is all Verse one,
no pre existing matter. God didn't make the world from anything.
He didn't form it from something that I had mentioned
that in Exnihilo out of nothing. But you must understand
this as well. Because all pagan mythologies had God forming

(33:57):
the world out of something. This one doesn't. He makes
the something and that forms it, and finally the other revolution.
Here is the utterly and totally universalist nature of Genesis one, meaning,
it isn't Jewish, it is I will be paroke for

(34:21):
a moment. It is a source of great pride to
me that the Jewish Bible is so universal in its origin.
It isn't here to tell you about Jews. It isn't
here to tell you about Judaism. It is here to
tell you about the God of everyone. This is as
valid in Japan and Africa, in America as in Israel,

(34:46):
that in the beginning God created the world. There is
nothing whatsoever nationalist. There is nothing religious, in other words,
specifically in a religion. It's very religious that God created
the world, but not of a specific religion. It is
a very powerful statement. It isn't the Jews God who

(35:08):
created the world. It is the God of the world
who created the world. And we will see if we
get that far, that God wanted it to be that way.
He wanted to be everybody's God and be obeyed as
everybody's God. The idea that he had to reveal his

(35:30):
will to one group came later from the internal evidences
I read it. That's why I have always called the
Jewish people an ad hoc movement with a temporary assignment,
and when fulfilled, theoretically at least, it can go out

(35:52):
of business. It was formed for a task, the task
will be fulfilled, and then we would end in the
very different world. But God's original intent was totally universalist.
It's the God of the world, the God who created everything.
That is Genesis one one. The revolution inherent in that statement,

(36:18):
which is why everybody knows it, why it is so
deeply part of the Judeo Christian, Muslim and Western cultures.
It is so deeply embedded in it. People have tried
to fight it. Nature created itself, the world created itself.
There is no God, there is no supervisor, and so on.

(36:41):
But this is their battle against Genesis one on. The task,
as I said, is to tell you the nature of God,
not the nature of science, and so keep that in
mind as we continue. I'm not going to go over
every sentence. I'm picking out specific ones. One three. God said,

(37:05):
let there be light, and there was light that great?
That's it. I always had this vision as a kid
of you know the God. Did God say it with effort?
Did he yell it? Did he whisper it? Did he
think it? Did it take any effort at all to say? Oh,
of every life, of every life? Or was it? You know?

(37:28):
What there be like? It is so extraordinary. The simplicity
here is staggering. He wills it and it happens. Again.
The only way you could begin to appreciate what a
revolution this all is is to read ancient mythologies, what
the whole rest of the world, not just the ancient

(37:49):
Middle East, everywhere, Japan, Africa, the Americas, anywhere you wish,
read every beginning, The beginning was physical. Just the universal
God willing something is a staggering change. God wills it

(38:10):
and it happens. Let there be light now, by the way,
it's a very interesting thing, which I am sure twenty
five fifty one hundred to one Ndred years ago was
a great source of scuffing by atheists. I remember hearing
it as a kid. How could there be light? The

(38:30):
sun wasn't even invented yet, the stars weren't even created yet.
That's pretty interesting. Isn't it. Now, you gotta admit whether
it was men or God who wrote this, they had
to be pretty well aware of that question. One thing
most people grant is that whoever wrote it wasn't stupid.
Whoever wrote it also would have realized, how was their

(38:52):
light before stars, before the sun? It's a good question.
I don't have an answer to that, but you have
to admit that that's quite something. It's pretty impressive, isn't there.
That's a pretty risky thing to write because it would
have seemed to anybody pre Big Bang, that's pretty weird.
Where did it come from? Well, there's no answer to that.

(39:16):
I know. I find that very compelling force, say God
writing every word. But I will say for a divine
element of wisdom here that transcends the norm because it's
a very obvious question that not all of you might
have thought of. Where did the light come from? Nothing
that makes light had been created? One four? God saw

(39:42):
it was good. This also knocked out a lot of
ancient cosmologies because in the ancient creation things it was miserable.
Everybody was fighting everybody. The gods were killing each other
to see who would win. They were battling major sea,
sea monsters and big giant turtles, and there was a

(40:05):
tremendous amount of sex and cruelty. God says, let there
be light and saw it was good. Can you get simpler?
Can you get more more beautiful than that? He liked
what he did? That, by the way, isn't that touching?
If we're supposed to learn from God? Clearly one thing

(40:26):
you might want to pick up is what real humility
is about. You're allowed to say your work is good,
if it's good, if you want to imitate God. Don't
go around saying of something good you've done. Yeah, that's fake,
that's false humility. Real humility acknowledges what you've done. I

(40:47):
think I've always been touched by that. God looks at
what he did. Yeah, that was a good job. Isn't
that something you sawt was good? And to teach us too,
There is goodness inherent in this world of even though
there's so much evil. It's why seventy five percent of
you said more than seventy five percent of your pain
came from people, didn't come from God. God created a

(41:10):
good world. We screw it up. It's a famous theological
term to screw up from the Latin. Screw them. Tremendum.

Speaker 1 (41:24):
This episode of Timeless Wisdom will.

Speaker 2 (41:27):
Continue right after this.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
Now, very interesting thing coming up here. We're still now
in Genesis won three. Then God said, let there be
light in There was light. Okay, God saw the light
that was good, divided the light from the dark, got cold,
the light day in the darkly cold night. So the
evening and the morning were the first day. Now, this

(42:04):
is the answer and answer I believe to creationists who
wished to posit twenty four hour days as God's creation
of the universe, that there were six twenty four hour
time periods because there was day and night before the sun.

(42:24):
But it's the sun that gives us days and nights
of twenty four hours altogether. No sun, no day. We're
talking about a day and an evening of totally different conceptions.
It's a divine day or evening. It's a metaphor, if
you will, it's a period, it's an eon. I don't
know what it is, but it can't be a day.

(42:47):
Even if you are a literalist, I'll grant literalism to
Bible literalists. You still can't have a day here because
there is no sun. So the very use of the
term day doesn't mean obviously the day as we know it,
because the day as we know it is dependent entirely
upon there being a sun. That's how we measure our units.

(43:11):
So that's that's why I am troubled by creation It's
because they're they're battling the correct battle with the wrong weapons.
It is a correct battle to battle. The atheist who
says everything came about on its own, that I join
that battle, But to oppose it with ideas that I

(43:33):
think are foreign to the text itself, just to go
to the other extreme, from the secular extreme, cannot I
personally cannot support. So I find myself and I might
as well handle this right now. In the middle. On
the one hand, you have those who believe everything came
about by evolution without God, and now the others extreme

(43:53):
is the creationists, no evolution in everything as written. I
have no problem with evolution. I have problem with evolution
with God. The notion that everything came about on its
own strikes me as absurd, just absurd, that it just
happened on its own. And by the way, according to

(44:15):
one of the great paleontologists of our times Stephen Jay Gould,
who is an agnostic or an atheist, the heart of paleontologist,
who writes on evolution. He has recently said that he
believes that if time went backwards and we started all
over under the same conditions, life wouldn't have arisen as
it did. It's a fluke. It's too much of a fluke.

(44:39):
So there was no inevitability, even an evolution. Even the
evolutionists will have to say, it's a quirk between quirk
and instrumentality and intelligence. I'll take intelligence over quirk as
having created intelligence. But please understand that we do have
a day before we have the sun. Now, the second

(45:00):
day is very interesting. Second day nothing gets created. Find
that a very interesting thing that may be new to
many of you. Look at the second day is six
to eight. Then God said, let there be a firmament
in the midst of the waters. One of the things
that one of the things I love about this is
how how you get these English words which mean nothing.

(45:25):
Anybody used firmament in the last month. Wow, look at
the firmament. Oh, what's a firmament? Look? The truth is
that the people working on this don't have a real
answer because the Hebrew is not really translatable. The Hebrew
is a rakia, and I remember it drove me crazy

(45:48):
when I first learned this, like in second grade. The
teacher acted like everybody knew what rakia was, Like you know,
like you do all know what firmament is. Oh well,
of course there's a rookie up there, and it didn't
make sense. But now I will try to explain to
you what probably didn't make sense in Sunday school or
Hebrew school, or for that matter, Yeshiva. If you went

(46:10):
the ancient mind understood the universe as this, now you
have to enter their mind. It's not, obviously not the
way you see it. The universe is divided into three sections,
waters above, waters below, the waters of our land as
it were, and in the middle is what we would
call space or atmosphere. Okay, so the beginning what God

(46:36):
did was, apparently in this understanding, was to separate the waters.
The word for heaven or sky or heavens in Hebrew
is the word for waters or water with a shin
in front of it. The word for water is mayan.
The word for sky is shaw mayan. So obviously that's

(46:59):
why it comes from this. It comes from this. This
is where we first encountered the word for the heavens,
or for the or for the sky. So what you
have is the notion in the word. It would be
as if the word were waters, would be our word
for heavens the waters. So the waters were separated, that

(47:19):
made room. Then how did it rain? It punctured the
firmament or the rakhiah, it would be there would be holes.
That That's how the ancient mind would understand it. Okay,
therefore that's what God did. God was not creating a
thing on the second day. Spent the whole second day
just making some order out of the beginning. That is how.

(47:44):
That is what is being taught here God is. And
and by the way, there's another proof that there was
no creation. It's the only day where God didn't say it. Anybody,
you know, what did God create on a second day?
I'd be shocked if anybody you know would be able
to answer. The answer is nothing. God didn't create a

(48:07):
thing on the second day or the second period, which
would be more more clear. What he did was create
the order of the of the separating of the waters,
which obviously meant a lot more to peace. Well, then
now you'll say, well, this proves God didn't write it,
or this proves that it's you know that it's just
primitive literature or ancient literature. Let me tell you something.

(48:34):
It had to be understandable to the people a three
thousand years ago, or nobody would have passed it down.
Of course, the Torah had to speak in a language
that was related to by the people of the time.
It's just natural. It had to be done. To me,
the miracle is that the Bible speaks to me in

(48:55):
nineteen ninety two and to ancestors three thousand years ago.
That's what's incredible to me. But that there will be
stuff that they would have related to better. I relate
better to let there be light. You don't think the
ancient people, ancient Jews, thought this is weird light before
the sun and the stars. But now we relate to

(49:18):
that terrifically big bang rate glows prior to this. But
you got to give the ancients something for them to
relate to too, because they were all wondering, gee, how
did the waters get separated? That was their big wonderment.
Here's your answer, day number three. So there was nothing good. Right.

(49:40):
God didn't look around and say, gee, I made a
good separation. Okay, that was the one day of the
creation process when God did not say, what a terrific thing.
Number day number three, Genesis nine to thirteen. What happens
here is God gathers the waters to make for a

(50:00):
dry area. He calls the water sea, calls the dry
area earth, and that he saw was good. But we're
not done on the third day because now with the
land and the sea, God God can asks the earth,
tells the earth to sprout vegetation, sea bearing plants and

(50:23):
fruit trees bearing fruit. The obvious question is, how do
you get vegetation prior to the sun? Okay? This is
one of the Biblical critics or skeptics greatest questions. Uh huh.
You see, now, first of all, whenever I argue with anybody,

(50:44):
I try to assess their intelligence. It's one of the
things that you try to do. You would think that
those who attacked the Bible on this ground would at
least acknowledge that the people who wrote it also knew
sun was important to growing things because they saw, gee,
very little grows in caves. I bet they knew that
three thousand years ago that things don't grow in caves,

(51:06):
so obviously they knew too. They planted things, they had trees,
they had olive trees, and none of them were indoors.
Everything they grew were outdoors, so they too knew you
needed sun. So obviously whoever wrote this would understand that too.
So asking a question, the presupposes I really caught them

(51:27):
in an internal inconsistency, implies that they didn't know that
there was a theoretical inconsistency. The point is, however, that
it doesn't say what. The point is that I see
it is. God creates on the third Day, the possibility
of vegetation. The seeds, as it were, are planted. First,

(51:49):
you need the earth to be able to sprout these
things the other. That's number one. Number two. Remember what
is being told here not science. What is being taught
here is the nature of God. The most important thing
in Genesis one is to kill mythology, to kill polytheism,

(52:12):
to kill paganism. That's the intent. When you read it
that way, everything becomes clearer. If you read it for science,
you're finished. If you read it to combat polytheism, it's
all clear. God says, Let there, let nature produce these things.
As Nahumsarna, who was author of this wonderful work and

(52:37):
the Jewish Publication Society commentary on the Torah. He's the
one of the genesis. It's a professor at Brandeis University,
publical scholar, and he wrote, this meant no room for
fertility cults. Fertility cults worshiped the ground, worshiped nature. If

(52:58):
they only did the right thing, then the goddesses or
the nature goddesses will give us fruit. No, what are
you talking about. It comes from the earth. I said
it that way on the third day. Cult fertility, schmertility.
Remember that is what is being done here. Judaism loathes

(53:20):
superstid doesn't mean Jews load superstition. Very important. Little puff,
that's what you will get after I give you the sun.
First I give you the seeds. Then I'm going to
give you the sun, and the stuff's gonna come out.
God saw that was good. He liked his work. On
the third day, I just wished to announce that day

(53:41):
number four is verse fourteen to nineteen. Interesting the way
we have here verse number fourteen hearkens back to verse one.
Let there be lights. First there was let there be light.

(54:04):
So an it's obvious that they knew that the first
light wasn't sunlight or starlight, because it's a different term here.
It's the lights, the things that give light. The first
one was just light. Let there be lights. You will
love this next point, which is not mine. I don't

(54:24):
remember whose it was, but I loved it when I
read it. You will notice that the sun and the
moon and the stars aren't mentioned. This is God's way
of dumping on all of them. They are not even

(54:44):
worthy of a mentioned in the creation story. Let's have
some lights. Thank you, the sun, the moon. You know
why because the Sun, the moon, and the stars were
all worshiped. That's why. Remember if you read Genesis one
is a battle against superstition, paganism, polytheism. It's all understandable then,

(55:10):
not as a geological tale. And the fact that we
don't live in a in a polytheistic world unless you
get really involved with some left wing environmental groups. That
is a it is a reason for this is the
reason for it. People worship the sun, people worshiped the moon,

(55:33):
and the stars of course, were seen as signs for
dictating your life. They weren't even worthy of a mention
that was astrology. I'm not here to not astrology. I
think it's a lot of fun. But they don't determine life.
God does. They may have characteristics otherwise. The Talmud later

(55:55):
is ambivalent on the issue when I couldn't care less
as I say. I get a kick out of it,
and I'm open to anything. But if you truly believe
that the stars determined as opposed to God, that's idle
worship in Judaism. But they're not even mentioned. It's just
time to set the lights up, and that was it.
So that's what happens. On the fourth day. God says,

(56:18):
let there be lights, and there were lights. Ye. Here
is the best part. Just in case you're still worshiping
those lights, God tells you what he put them up
there for. He actually insults them. They're not even there
to give you all all the things you expect from them.
Why look at one fourteen, look at fourteen? Why should

(56:39):
they be there? Look at their big role to divide
the day from the night and to be signs for
seasons for days and years. Isn't that amazing? That's all
they are? What you know, what a dethroning of that is?
It's almost like saying, let there be a president so
that he can clean the White House floor. I can't

(57:00):
even think of an appropriate simile for our life today.
This is a total debunking of ancient mythology. The lights
are there just to be to let you know what
day it is, what season it is, and so on.
And by the way, this is another proof, in my opinion,
this is a second proof of They couldn't have been

(57:23):
days before day number four, because this is where this
only now they've become signed for days. Years. There were
no years, there were no seasons, and there were no
days prior to day number four. It says it. Just
read it. It says it, I give you the lights.
Now you will have seasons, years and days. So the

(57:47):
next time you hear six twenty four hour days, you
just gotta say, come on, don't you know Genesis one fourteen,
they weren't invented yet. Days, years, and seasons. They start
over here in day number four, and God saw it

(58:07):
was good, liked his work. On the fourth day, fifth day,
Verse twenty, God tells the water to have living beings
come out again. It is totally God God telling nature
what to do. I repeat Nature has no will of

(58:32):
its own none. God tells it what to do. That's critical,
and we are losing this insight in our ultra modern age,
where nature is regarded as its own entity, unto itself.
It is simply the handiwork of this God. Living beings

(58:55):
come out of the water, and vegetation comes out of
the earth. Now here is an interesting thing in twenty one.
So God created great sea creatures and every living thing
that moves with which the waters are bound, that according
to con every wing bird according to its kind God.
So it was good. This is the first use of
the word creation since Genesis won one. Isn't that interesting?

(59:21):
And I think there's a deliberate reason here. It was
because whoever wrote this knew that there would be evolutionists
in the late nineteenth and twentieth century, and therefore, just
to annoy them, the notion of creation ex nihilo. That's

(59:42):
what creation is about. Is thrown in for living beings.
Everything else came about through whatever means it came about.
But here is a specific statement. Now when we're talking
about living beings, the creator comes back. Don't think living
beings just happened to come about. I create them, and

(01:00:06):
the atheist paleontologist will agree on one ground. They did
seem to come abound by accident. That's why I quoted
Stephen Jay Gould. They didn't seem to come about inevitably
by nature. They did. One British astronomer is so convinced
that life could not have taken place on its own

(01:00:27):
in the limited time the earth had. That His conclusion,
and he's one of the illustrious British astronomers, is that
extraterrestrials dropped seeds on Earth. Now, between that and God,
I opt for God on pure notions of rationality. But
whether you opt for his or or God, please understand

(01:00:50):
that anybody who studies this stuff has to acknowledge. I
don't mean that this stuff the tora. I mean science,
the very profound unlikelihood of life developing as we know it.
That's why we have in verse twenty one, God creates
living beings again. And he looked around and he saw

(01:01:13):
it was good. And day number six, from verses twenty
four to thirty one, the earth brought forth the land
animals now and the uh and the tunny Nim which
which came about from the from the waters tannin is

(01:01:35):
a giant sea serpent, which they would have been totally
familiar with and was a profoundly worshiped thing. So they
threw in the word just to get it off the
get it out of the way. You know what, even
the tany nim God created, after all, it's very odd.
Why would God enumerate one fish? It would be odd, right,
I mean, what if it was alibate and God created

(01:01:57):
the universe in halibit, So you would say, come halibit right,
to which the Jewish answer is why not? But that
I'm not going to leave you with the Jewish answer.
The answer here is that there was a specific desire
to knock out the notion that these tiny nim, these
great sea monsters were anything but God's creation too. That's

(01:02:19):
the reason that they are listed. But now, one of
the all time great verses of the Bible, verse twenty six.
Then God said, let us make man in our image
according to our likeness. Let them have dominion over the

(01:02:41):
fish of the sea, over the birds of the air,
and over the cattle, over all the earth, and over
every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. Let us
make man in our image. Is one of the most
important statements ever made by biblical or not. Okay, now
I am going to devote some time to this. Why

(01:03:03):
what does it teach? What is so important? First of all,
Who's God talking to? This is one of the Theologians'
all time favorite verses. Who is God talking to? For
men Christians? It is a clear implication of a triune God.

(01:03:26):
For the rabbis, they had a poetic way of looking
at it, that God, when he came to create the
human being, did so in humility and didn't say I'm
gonna make man, and said he said, let us as
the royal we And whom did he speak to? Malatheja

(01:03:47):
chere the angels who serve him. Well, those of you
who know me at all can only imagine how I
reacted to that when I was a kid. What you
see today is basically what I was at seven, just seven,
and I sat in class and when I'll never forget

(01:04:09):
when the rabbi said God said it to the angels,
I almost choked. I can't buy that stuff. It's poetic,
but I can't buy it said to the angels. And
until a few years ago, I simply didn't know what
the sentence meant. And I'm willing to live with that.

(01:04:30):
I much prefer to say I don't know then by
what's called in Yiddish abubba mysee, which is an old
wives tale in Yiddish. I just can't buy that stuff.
God looked and said, to the angels, listen, let's make men.
I finally heard a rabbi. As it turns out, it
was an Orthodox rabbi who gave another explanation that I

(01:04:53):
am now told others have had too, but I just
had never heard it, which makes absolute sense to me.
Who could God possibly have been speaking to. First of all,
there's no mention of angels so until now, so you
just have to make that up. But there is mention

(01:05:13):
of other creatures that God could have said it to.
Who the animals and boy talk about lights. All the
lights in his brain went off went on when I
heard that explanation. That makes perfect sense. God's created all

(01:05:33):
the animals on this day and now says to them,
let's make man in our image, my friends. Nothing I
could ever say to people is as important as this
understanding of the human being. We are created in God's
image and we are created in animal's image. This is
one of the deepest Jewish understandings of the human being.

(01:05:57):
It is one of the great understandings that has kept
this particular jew saying because the understanding that I am
part animal and part God keeps me sane. I know
what I need to aspire to God, but I also
know that I have to make peace with the fact
that I'm also an animal. Therefore, I have both things.

(01:06:23):
I am given with this understanding, peace with my nature
and yet something to aspire to. I'm not only animal,
I'm half animal. My task is to become holy. Holy
is what God is. Animals are not created in anybody's image.
We are in their image and God's image. And if

(01:06:47):
you walk around understanding your half animal and half God,
it's wonderful. You know who you are, you know what
there is to try to be. Number two, let us
make man in our image means that we are created

(01:07:07):
in God's image. That is why we are different in
worth than animals. It's that reason and that reason alone
why you should save a stranger before the dog you
love when both are drowning. There is no secular reason
to save a person whom you don't love before the

(01:07:30):
dog that you do love. And since we live in
a secular age. Most people are voting for their dog
because they haven't been raised with Genesis one twenty six
that we are created in God's image. The animals are
not created in God's image. They were created. We saw

(01:07:51):
their description. They just came out of the earth and
came out of water. They're part of nature. We're not.
We're half part of nature, but we're half divine. They're not.
We are sacred, they are not. And to prove that point,

(01:08:13):
the very same verse that says that we are created
in God's image tell that we are to have dominion
over the animals and the earth. It scores. It makes
the point that much more sharply. We are higher than animals.

(01:08:35):
We are not another animal. Whenever I hear a person
say people and other animals, I know I've met a
secular person. It's a giveaway. I remember in the sixties
that famous sixties button war is not healthy for children
and other living things. It was a sign of the

(01:08:55):
times that children and other living things were equated. We
are not another living thing. Broccoli is even sea otters
may they live and be well and lie on their
back and be cute, are also not just another living
They are another living thing. Excuse me, we are not

(01:09:19):
we are in God's image. We are sacred. Animals are
not sacred. Number three, Because we are created in God's image.
Every human being is infinitely valuable. It doesn't say white

(01:09:42):
people are in God's image, or black people are in
God's image, or Jews are in God's image. The human
being is in God's image. It's so radical and revolutionary,
the human being period. This verse one twenty six should

(01:10:06):
have undermined slavery. I would love to have known the
answer to the question to a religious slave master, what
do you say to one twenty six? Because all of
his answers would have been crap. It is too painful
that a religious person could have kept a slave in

(01:10:31):
light of this extraordinary statement that every human being is
created in God's image period, the human being, and it's beautiful.
There is no hint of a race or religion of
Adam or Eve, no hint, thank God, because if there

(01:10:52):
were just a hint, boy, would it be used. Maybe?
You know, the Muslims believe that the earth that God created,
and I think it's in the Quran was red, black
and white. Was the Koran's way of saying that there

(01:11:12):
is no, one color better than another one. But of
course that comes about two thousand, six hundred years, No,
about two thousand years later, it's six hundred. My math
is a joke. One thousand and six hundred, sixteen hundred correct,
so far from there, and this was so about yeah,

(01:11:35):
about two thousand years. But it is an extraordinarily, extraordinarily
important idea that we are created in God's image. It
makes every one of us infinitely valuable. The animals are
not in God's image. If you lose your dog, you

(01:11:55):
get another one, But if you lose your child, you
don't get another one. It's a big difference. And I
love our dogs. I know what to love a dog
is like. You can still love your dog and understand
that they're replaceable. They're not exactly replaceable. I understand they

(01:12:17):
have their own little quirks and large you can get
another one. Can you imagine anybody saying about a person, Oh,
you lost your brother, and get another sibling. Tell your
parents to make a new one. It doesn't work like that.

(01:12:37):
You lose a friend, well you got another friend. My
friend died. Oh you're gonna get another one. Imagine somebody
reacting that way. The infinite preciousness. That's why murder is
so evil, and that's why murder will be mentioned in
the beginning of Genesis the only crime. Because it's so evil,

(01:12:57):
you have destroyed uniqueness and number four equality. We are
all created in God's image. That means we are identically equal.
It is irrelevant to what a group we come from,

(01:13:20):
or are in or join. Let me read to you
from Sarna on image on the revolutionary element of being created,
that every human being is created in God's image in Genesis.
The words here used here to convey these ideas can

(01:13:45):
better be understood in the light of a phenomenon registered
in both Mesopotamia and Egypt, whereby the ruling monarch is
described as the image or the likeness of God, of
a god you see who. You understand that the Bible
is using the language that people knew then, but it's

(01:14:07):
totally changing it. In Mesopotamia we find the following salutations
quote the father of my lord, the king is the
very image of Bell, that's one of the gods. And
the king, my lord is the very image of Bel.
The king, lord of the lands is the image of

(01:14:28):
shamash O, king of the inhabited world. These are all
different salutations. In Mesopotamia, o king of the inhabited world,
you are the image of Marduk. In Egypt, the same
concept is expressed through the name Tutinhamen. You've all heard
of Tutankhamen, right, which means the living image of the

(01:14:48):
god Amun, and in the designation of Thutmost the fourth
as the likeness of Rain without doubt. The terminology employed
in Genesis is derived from regal vocabulary, which serves to
elevate the king above the ordinary run of men. In

(01:15:09):
the Bible, this idea has become democratized. All human beings
are created in the image of God. Each person bears
the stamp of royalty. Isn't that powerful? Only kings were
in the image of gods in the ancient world, And

(01:15:30):
here comes an ancient world document to Satan. Every one
of us is in the image of God. I get
the chills when I think of what a revolution that was.
Now this one twenty six is so important, and I
will end with one twenty six so that we'll have
time for your questions. One twenty six has and it's

(01:15:56):
not a non sequitur. After we're told we are created
in God's image. It just to send home the point,
as I said earlier, more sharply, that we are greater
and sacred, that more sacred, not more sacred. We are
sacred and greater than animals. We are to have dominion,

(01:16:16):
We're to dominate the natural world. This bothers some modern people.
So you see, look at the biblical tradition. Look at
what it did to Jujaeo Christian Western world. It told
people that they can lord over nature. But no, we

(01:16:38):
are partners with nature, we are one with nature. And
then you get even more extreme. We are a cancer
on nature as the head of earth. First said ladies
and gentlemen. This is stating categorically. You may reject it,
but you can't change it. It is a categorical statement

(01:17:01):
that God created the world for our use. The reason
for all of these things was for the ultimate in creation,
you and me. That is why God created the world
for us to use it, not abuse it. Use and
abuse are very different. We have no problem with drug use.

(01:17:24):
We have problem with drug abuse. You may use, you
must use the world, because you are creating the divine image,
and you will make use of it properly. But that
is the only reason it is there when we talk
about the flood. That's what I'll show you. I remember

(01:17:44):
asking this this time the Rabbi came through, and about
third grade, I said, Rabbi, why did God destroy the
animals in the flood? They didn't sin good question, though,
and he gave a better answer than the question even.
He said, because if we're not going to have people around,

(01:18:08):
why have animals? Now? This will rub some people today
terribly the wrong way. You mean, the only reason for porpoises,
the only reason for the great Burundian gorilla is for
our sake, yep. And the proof is they don't do anything.

(01:18:35):
This kills people, It just kills them, to hear it.
They don't build anything. Every animal today lives exactly like
it's great great Gat, great Gret great gat Gat great
great great grandfather did. They don't do a damn thing.
They eat, they have sex, they roll, they play, they

(01:18:57):
lick and drop dead, and then the next one does
the same thing. I love them. They relax me incredibly.
I give money to save species, but that's it, that's it.

Speaker 3 (01:19:16):
They do not wonder why they are there. They couldn't
care less. We build, We are in God's image. We make,
we build, we think, we create. We can be good.
Dog can't be good.

Speaker 2 (01:19:34):
If dogs could be good, then dogs should have been
put up with these Nazis at the Nuremberg trials because
of all the German shepherds that we used to eat prisoners, genitals.
The use of dogs and Auschwitz is notorious. The same
dog that you love at Auschwitz eight people alive. Do

(01:19:58):
I have anything against that dog? No, he's not evil.
A dog can't be evil anymore than a hammer can
be evil. That's used to smash your brain. The wielder
is evil, but the same with good. They can't be
good either. We can be good, we can be evil.
We can create. That's what God wanted in the world.

(01:20:23):
We alone do that. That's why one twenty six is
so critical. We alone are in God's image, and we
alone are to rule the world. The world was created
for us. One of the lovely things I learned from
the Talmud when I was a child is every person

(01:20:45):
should walk around saying bishfili nivra alan for me, the
world was created. It's actually been very effective with Jews
that attitude, and a lot of Jews do believe the
world was created for them. This is my old theory

(01:21:05):
about why Jews would complain far more than Catholics or
Protestants if the grapefruit weren't quite ripe in a test
of the three groups in any given room. For me,
this grapefruit was created it. Actually, I am convinced them
all serious nones. That has been imbibed very well in
Jewish life. But every human is to see the world

(01:21:27):
that way, which means, of course, of course you don't
abuse it. If the world was created for you, why
would you abuse it. It's also created for your children,
so if I abuse it, they don't have it to enjoy.
That is a good, good argument for environmental groups, but
it strikes it's a little too anthropocentric for them. When

(01:21:52):
I make these arguments on radio, they call me up
and say, oh, you have an anthropercentric view of the worldly,
man centered human centered view. They're right, I do. I do,
And it's from one twenty six. There's another reason though,
that this is so critical to dominate the world. Remember

(01:22:14):
the battle of one of chedis one. It's against superstition
and payaganism. To the Pagans, nature ruled them, and so
that's why they worship nature. Please I will do something
for you Nature. If you give me fruit, if you

(01:22:36):
give me rain. This opened the way to finding a
cure for cancer. It is no coincidence that the world
influenced by this, the Western world, became the world that
developed overwhelmingly what we know is modern medicine, because in

(01:22:58):
order to develop medicine, you must first understand that you
must conquer nature. If nature is dominant, you can't stop it.
You can only voodooize it. You can stab little pins
and things and hope that it'll work. You can do incantations,

(01:23:19):
you can bring sack revices, you can say the right
prayers to the right nature, God or goddess. Because nature
is in control. God made it, and we're in control
of it. And if we ruin it, we'll suffer. When
we abuse it, we will suffer. When we use it,
we will benefit. But that is why this is so critical.

(01:23:46):
And today there is a movement to see nature in
the driver's seat and not the human being. But this
was the war. It was the war against nature, gods,
and against nature as being a god. You might not
have thought that there is so much in the first

(01:24:08):
chapter of Genesis. So I have good news. There's more
but I can't. I won't get to it now. There
is I have so much more to share with you,
but it is. It is just an overwhelming task. These
were some of the critical elements to get through. Next

(01:24:31):
time we will talk about the second recapitulation. Others will
say the second story of the Creation, which involves extremely
complex subjects, and I ask you to read it in advance,
chapter two with a different way in which the in

(01:24:53):
which God created people. And I'm going to but I'm
going to start next time with one twenty seven.

Speaker 1 (01:25:02):
This has been timeless wisdom with Dennis Prager. Visit Denisprager
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